Little Red Riding Hood
by Ruze a Koure
Summary: Once upon a time, a little girl lived with her grandfather in the forest where she was trained to kill wolves... Please review, constructive criticism appreciated, no matter how harsh.


**Summary: Once upon a time, a little girl called Wren was taken away by her grandfather to live in the woods, where she grew up to kill wolves, vampires and everything else that goes bump in the night, certain that her ending would be anything other than happy. **

The day Wren turned twelve, her grandfather drove her out into the middle of the taiga, where the frost was never broken and the expanse above was laden with stars strung across its oily surface, eclipsed only by the needle-points of the trees whose skeletal silhouettes pierced the sky.

This is what her grandfather gave her: her grandfather gave her a box of matches, and her grandfather gave her a tiny knife that whittled wood, and her grandfather gave her a cookie that had been fresh maybe a week ago, and her grandfather wished her a happy birthday before he got back into his truck and rattled away and left Wren behind.

Wren had been blindfolded, of course, because where was the challenge if she was not? Her hands were so cold, her fingers numb with the frost, that it took her a minute to unpick the knot with which her grandfather had bound the cloth over her eyes - and then she blinked and blinked and blinked again to adjust her eyes to the world once more.

She was glad that this was happening at night, in the wintertime when the sun was scarce, so that there was no light to reflect off the snow and pain her eyes. Her grandfather had always been very thoughtful like that.

She ate the cookie, and she put her knife in her pocket, and she brushed away the crumbs that clung to her coat, and she lit a match, and she turned on the spot to see the stars, and she found herself turning so fast that the stars become streaks of light across the sky.

She would go north, she decided - because north meant isolated, and her grandfather had always told her that she would have to be the loneliest girl in the world if she wanted to stay safe.

He had told her stories when she was younger, stories of other lonely girls who were princesses and warriors and CEOs - lonely girls who made the right decisions, and lonely girls who made the wrong decisions, and lonely girls who made no decisions at all, and her grandfather's face had always twisted slightly when he talked about those last ones, as though he didn't know whether to be upset or disgusted.

Wren's favourite story had always been the lonely princess who was content to be lonely, because she seemed the most like Wren.

Her match burned out and so she lit another and shielded it against the snow so that it would flicker and catch and take hold.

_The princess had been the sort with suitors aplenty - suitors who came from India with tiny jade tigers as large as your thumbnail and elephants laden with sweet-smelling spices, suitors who came from Russia with fur coats and bouquets with an uneven number of sweet-smelling flowers, suitors who came from China with rolls of fine silks and red envelopes fat with gold, suitors from Ireland with woven crosses and elegantly carved fiddles of bogwood and so many more._

Wren had not eaten that day nor had her grandfather given her any food but for the cookie she had already eaten, but she knew her priorities and so she took off her leather satchel and filled it with snow and stamped on it to crush and melt the snow so it would not be so cold when it came time to drink it.

_Each suitor had been met with the princess' riddleman in turn - not to answer one riddle, but three._

_The first riddle was this: what is as sharp as a sabre, as fast as a swordsman's parry?_

_The second riddle was this: what is as changeable as a storm and twice as dangerous?_

_The third riddle was this: what does the princess love above all else?_

Wren rarely slipped on the snow anymore - her stride was sure.

_The suitor from India heard the first two riddles, and wrote down his answers - he then met the princess, who asked him the third, and when he could not answer correctly, he was sent away with his tiny jade tigers as large as your thumbnail and elephants laden with sweet-smelling spices, for although he was educated in philosophy and theology and all things ending in -y, he could not answer the riddle._

She scooped up a handful of cold water from her satchel and lifted it to her mouth - it was cool and sweet, and she allowed herself no more than a few droplets before she moved on again, deeper into the taiga, her little whittling knife at the ready.

_The suitor from Russia heard the first two riddles, and wrote down his answers - he then met the princess, who asked him the third, and when he could not answer correctly, he was sent away with his fur coats and bouquets with an uneven number of sweet-smelling flowers, for although he was knowledgeable of all the songs of the land and the people, he could not answer the riddle._

The paw prints were faint, heading north-east - snow rarely fell in the dead of winter, and so they remained uncovered still, untouched by fresh fall, but the winds shifted the snow over time so that footsteps faded and pawprints slowly disappeared, and so Wren wasted no time changing course to track the animal.

_The suitor from China heard the first two riddles, and wrote down his answers - he then met the princess, who asked him the third, and when he could not answer correctly, he was sent away with his rolls of fine silks and red envelopes fat with gold, for although his language was that of poetry and beauty and all things ending in -y, he could not answer the riddle._

Wren had always admired wolves - for their strength, for their intelligence, for their senses, which were almost as keen as her own.

_The suitor from Ireland heard the first two riddles, and wrote down his answers - he then met the princess, who asked him the third, and when he could not answer correctly, he was sent away with his__ woven crosses and elegantly carved fiddles of bogwood,__ for although his people were born with answers and trickery on the tip of their tongue, he could not answer the riddle._

No doubt this wolf could hear her now, was preparing its next movement - it could detect heartbeats from metres away, and it could run almost as fast as Wren herself.

_The last suitor to come to the palace was a poor one - a soldier, Wren's grandfather had said, one whose uniform was ragged from war and whose blood was still warm from violence. And although he brought with him no tiny jade tigers as large as your thumbnail, no elephants laden with sweet-smelling spices, no fur coats, no bouquets with an uneven number of sweet-smelling flowers, no rolls of fine silks, no red envelopes fat with gold, no woven crosses and no elegantly carved fiddles of bogwood, he was permitted to hear the first two riddles, and he wrote down his answers - he then met the princess, who was as beautiful as the night sky, who asked him the third._

_This soldier said to her (and here Wren's grandfather would put on a low voice as though he were a soldier with a bullet in his throat), he said, "Princess, the answer to your riddle is the same as the answer to the other two, and that answer is yourself. It is you who is as sharp as a sceptre and as fast as a swordsman's parry - it is you who is as changeable as a storm and twice as dangerous - and you love yourself above all else."_

_The princess was impressed by the guard's keen insight, and -_

_"Married him," Wren had said the first time her grandfather had told her the story._

_"Pardon?"_

_"The princess married the handsome soldier. That's always the way these things end."_

_Her grandfather shook his head. "Nonsense. Marry him? They had only just met! No, the princess was accustomed to being the lonely princess by now, and so the soldier - who was, by the way, scarred and grizzled and ragged from the war - the soldier becam_e _a guard and they lived ever after."_

Wren's knife was sharp and her aim was true, as it always was - it sought the wolf's throat, and it found it, even as the creature leapt and Wren dropped to the ground, ducking low in case her knife was too slow or the wolf too fast.

_"What about the happily ever after?"_

_"There is none. Oh, you might think there is. There's a dot at the end of the line and the final line of the page and the last page in the book, but that's no kind of ever after."_

_That had become her mantra, then. Sharp as a sabre, fast as a parry, changeable as a storm and twice as dangerous._

_And above all, selfish and lonely and self-concerned, because to be otherwise was dangerous._

Wren rolled the carcass over with the toe of her boot, and felt no remorse - only pride - for having felled such a beast. There were groups of hunters in these woods now, those seeking wolves on whose heads there was bounty, and although they were slower than Wren, they were better equipped - they carried rifles and darts and nets, and Wren had only her knife.

She knelt down and slit the wolf's throat.

_Her grandfather had been cleaning his skinning knife as he told this story, and he pointed it then at Wren, who had been six years old at that time._

_"You and me, Renny. We eat happy endings for breakfast."_

Dawn had not yet broken by the time Wren made it back to the tiny cabin she shared with her grandfather on the edge of the forest - the barest hint of smoke curled from the wooden chimney, and her grandfather must have seen her coming, because the next thing she knew he was beside her and helping her to haul the wolf carcass over the threshold.

Wren had killed plenty of wolves in her time.

Her grandfather promised to turn this one into a pelt for her, and he gave her warm milk and a slice of bread for making it back to the cabin in under four hours, and then he took out the little radio transistor he kept with him always and set it on the table in front of him, and he looked at Wren keenly. They shared eyes, Wren and her grandfather, and his were as strong as hers were sharp.

She knew what he was asking. The same question he asked every time.

_Are you ready?_

She shook her head, and he put the transistor away again, and that night Wren fell asleep to dreams of red eyes and skin that shone and, above it all, a russet wolf-that-was-not-a-wolf.


End file.
